Too Much Time on My Hands

What does it mean to be socially liberal? It means I would rather spend money on schools and youth programs than jail. It also means I would rather see more money going to working class folks so they can afford to raise their children than to allow corporations to move their factories overseas so they can line their own pockets leaving the rest of us behind. I’m ok with paying a little extra in taxes for quality health care instead of doling out hundreds of dollars a month for insurance that only protects me once I pay another $5,000 a year and then only at %80. (One third of all health care costs go directly to insurance companies.)

What it doesn’t mean is that I want to hand out thousands of dollars a year to a person that refuses to work. I don’t support the idea of having babies so that one can bring in more welfare. (I don’t know anyone who does.) It also doesn’t mean that I want to penalize people for working hard and making money. I just don’t like it when the people taking the money are not willing to pay those folks that are helping them make it, i.e. the guy flipping your burger or the receptionist stamping those premium checks. I also worked at the State of Montana for a very brief period and I know there is way more waste than you can imagine but I see opportunity there regardless of whether one is conservative or liberal.

I just had a conversation with my roommate that pretty much fired me up. His premise was that the reason why Fox “News” was so popular is because there are so many conservatives out there that were primed for a conservative news station that represented their own conservative values. The Tea Party was gaining momentum, he suggested, because people are tired of seeing their taxes going to social programs. Really? Be careful what you wish for. Here are a couple examples of how those conservative values are costing YOU a ton of money.

I worked for a backcountry rehab program in 01-02. When compared to a detention center, we were $100 a day, per student, cheaper than a detention center. We had a recidivism rate of around 20% after 6 months versus the %90+ the detention center could boast. (Admittedly, our numbers were a little inflated because we could choose not to accept certain students we knew were not right for the program. However, we were hugely successful in keeping kids out of placements after they got out.) In 2002, the State decided not to renew our contract and the program went under. They decided they needed to funnel more money into the detention centers then into ‘alternative programs’ that had no hard evidence that they were successful. (The numbers I got were from a study out of BYU.) The decision came from conservatives that didn’t want to support social programs. So instead, millions of our tax dollars will now be spent on a system that does not work. Nice work.

I also worked in the inner-city of Milwaukee as a program director for a community center and was the chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Network. My parent company was Ministry Health Care, which is a Catholic health group. If you know anything about the inner-cities, or any impoverished area, you have an understanding of how profound the effect of teenage pregnancy is on one’s education and the socialization of their child. It’s cyclical and exponential in the sense that as one generation grows up with a parent who lacks the parenting skills due to early pregnancy, they are much more likely to become pregnant as an adolescent and then their child is much more likely and so on. Teenage pregnancy and single headed households directly correlate with lower education, poverty and yes, crime. (Crimes that cost us all a ton of MONEY.)

The problem is, nobody can do anything about it because anytime someone, or a group or organization, steps up, they get shot down because the way to address it goes against someone’s values, (or morals, which is a joke. It’s more morally right to allow pregnancy indirectly by using strategies that don’t work versus making condoms available? Again, nice work.) We can’t have sex education in the schools because we’re worried that what they will teach is morally wrong but how many of you are willing to go to the inner-city and teach what you think is right to all those kids that are growing up without the resources or the parents that can teach them?

In both of these cases it’s the absolute perfect example of cutting off our noses in spite of our faces. We have the know-how. We have the science to back the results. We know what works but because there is this misconception of what the costs of these social programs are, we won’t support them. But what is the real cost and who is paying for it?

My point is, is that “news stations,” like Fox and the Tea Party itself are trying to scare us all into believing that all those Democrats want is to spend more and more money on social programs but that’s not true or fair. There is waste everywhere that we can address on both sides. If you remember, one of the most fiscally responsible presidents in our history was Bill Clinton. But being responsible sometimes means spending money to save money and generating revenue when needed to support those programs. Be careful what you wish for and before jumping on that wagon, take a close look at what you are going to be giving up.

Having said that, I understand how one becomes disenfranchised with a system we keep paying into without seeing a return. We pay taxes to a government and all we see is waste, cheating, fighting and nothing that really benefits us. We should expect to be protected instead of being thrown into a war we didn’t belong in. We should expect that our children are afforded a decent education. We all drive on the roads. We should all be able to see a doctor when we are sick. We should demand those things. We are paying for the services. WE ALL ARE! And we should expect to get something in return. I do get that. I’m just saying again, think before you jump.